Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Book by Angela Duckworth

This summary by Allen Cheng

Do you have problems finishing things? Do new ideas distract you from previous ones? Do you get derailed by
setbacks more often than you would like?
Then you could use more grit. In Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance book, Angela Duckworth shows
how grit – the combination of passion and perseverance – distinguishes high achievers, and why talent isn’t as
important as most people think.
If you’re not as gritty as you like, don’t fret – this Grit summary teaches the 4 major components of grit, and
how to develop grit in your kids and teammates.

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1-Page Summary of Grit

Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance

Passion is the consistency of goals held over long periods of time. It is NOT intensity or enthusiasm held for a
brief moment. It is endurance.
Perseverance is the ability to overcome setbacks, put in hard work, and finish things you’ve started.
Grit predicts success, even when controlling for talent or IQ. That is, between two people of the same talent
level, a grittier person will enjoy more success.
Make no mistake: talent and IQ are still important and still correlate with success. However, they are
not sufficient for high achievement. If you are talented, you get the most mileage by combining talent and
hard work. And if you are less talented, you can make up for it with grit, exceeding someone with more talent
who works less hard.
We tend to fetishize talent because it protects our ego – if other people’s successes are due to inborn talent,
then we are at an inherent disadvantage, and thus we don’t have to feel bad about not measuring up. We look
at Albert Einstein or Tom Brady and think, well they were born with it – there’s no way I could do what they do
– thus I don’t need to work hard.
Effort counts twice: skill = talent x effort. Achievement = skill x effort. The more effort you apply, the more
your skill rises, and the more you achieve.
Grit is changeable. It increases with age, and short-term experiments show that it can be influenced.
There are 4 components to grit:
Interest: enjoy what you’re doing
Practice: conduct deliberate practice to improve on your weaknesses and continuously improve
Purpose: believe that your work matters and improves the lives of others
Hope: believe in your capacity for achievement and ability to overcome difficulties. Growth mindset
The most successful parenting style is both supportive and demanding. The two do not need to trade off with
each other. Listen to your kids, talk to them, respect their viewpoints. Also, set ambitious goals for them,
punish them for breaking rules. This is also true of leadership and coaching.
To become more gritty, join a gritty culture. The social norms will force you to be gritty.

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Criticisms of Grit

I like this Grit book. The concepts are powerful, and it provides useful frameworks for how to improve grit.
That said, it suffers from a few major problems that plague many nonfiction books based on early research:
The biggest problem is the unclear causality of grit. Famously, “correlation does not mean causation.” The
book keeps repeating the idea that grittier people are more successful. Sure, but maybe it’s coincidental –
some qualities made them gritty, but they also made them more successful. Or the causation is the reverse –
being successful for some reason made them gritty. In other words, the book does not prove that 1) you can
increase grit, 2) increasing grit increases outcomes.
The gold standard for proving causation is the double-blind, randomized control trial. Angela Duckworth says
that these haven’t been done for ethical reasons (you can’t give a group of kids a gritty intervention and a
control group nothing), but this is unsatisfying.
That said, the evidence is suggestive. And anecdotally, from my personal life, grit can be improved.
Like most self-help books written for the popular press, Grit usually doesn’t quantify the magnitude of the
effects, or the predictive power of grit. This often makes the effects seem larger than actually reported in the
research, and makes you think grit matters more than the science shows it does. I blame the editor for this
one. For the pivotal studies, I go back to the original paper and show the original data, so you can make up
your own mind.
Example: when talking about West Point cadet dropout rates: “What distinguished the men who made it
through? Grit.” “What else predicts success? Baseline physical fitness at the start of training is essential. But
grit still predicts success.”
But compare this to the original paper: physical fitness (1.72) and general intelligence (1.46) were better
predictors than grit (1.32)
Example: in a spelling bee“grittier kids went further in competition. Verbal intelligence also predicted getting
further in competition. But there was no relationship at all between verbal IQ and grit. What’s more, verbally
talented spellers did not study any more than less able spellers, nor did they have a longer track record.”
In reality, the published research report shows that verbal IQ is MUCH more of a contributor to success than
grit is (OR = 2.22 for verbal IQ compared to OR = 1.41 for grit, meaning someone with a 1-standard deviation
higher verbal IQ has 122% better odds of advancing further in the spelling bee.) Furthermore, when grit and
verbal IQ are put in the same model, grit is no longer a significant contributor.
Some of the seminal studies were done with elite populations (West Point cadets, spelling bee finalists). It’s
unclear how it extends to the whole population.
Grit doesn’t apply to all pursuits. Duckworth found that grit was not a predictor of staying married in women. I
wish every nonfiction book had an appendix chapter saying: “what is the evidence that this concept isn’t
valid?”

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Preface
Angela Lee Duckworth is the child of Chinese immigrants. Her father, Ying Kao Lee, was a chemist and research
fellow at Dupont. Growing up, her dad was obsessed with how smart he and his family was, and he often told
her, “you’re no genius!”
Later in life, Duckworth wins the MacArthur Fellowship, often called the “genius grant,” ironically for the
theory that accomplishment may depend more on passion and perseverance than inborn talent (which is the
subject of this Grit summary).

Part 1: What Grit Is and Why It Matters

Chapter 1: Showing Up

First, our Grit summary lays the groundwork: where has grit been researched to make a difference in success?
Angela Duckworth’s early research tried to predict success in a variety of fields, like the military, sales,
business, and sports. She found that talent and luck were incomplete explanations for success. People who
showed early potential sometimes dropped out before they showed signs of full potential. And some very
successful people didn’t start off showing the most promise [like Tom Brady].
Instead of talent, Duckworth formulated the idea of grit: the combination of passion and perseverance.
Passion means long-term adherence to a goal and consistency of interest, as opposed to being a dilettante
and changing your goal mercurially. Perseverance means overcoming setbacks, hard work, and finishing
things, rather than giving up.
[There is a similar trait called conscientiousness, one of the Big Five personality traits. Conscientiousness
includes self-discipline and self-control. Grit improves on conscientiousness by including the retention of the
same high-order goals over long stretches of times. This allows grit to have greater predictive validity over
conscientiousness itself.]
For gritty people, “there was no realistic expectation of ever catching up to their ambitions. In their own eyes,
they were never good enough. They were the opposite of complacent. And yet, in a very real sense, they were
satisfied being unsatisfied. Each was chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance, and it was
the chase— as much as the capture— that was gratifying. Even if some of the things they had to do were
boring, or frustrating, or even painful, they wouldn’t dream of giving up. Their passion was enduring.”
As a researcher in psychology, Duckworth showed that grit predicts success in a variety of fields:
 West Point dropouts: New cadets endure an intense 7-week bootcamp called Beast Barracks. 1 in 20
drop out. The admissions criteria used for West Point, the Whole Candidate Score (which consists of

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 SAT score, high school rank, and physical fitness), didn’t reliably predict who would drop out. In
contrast, grit predicted completion better than any other predictor – candidates with 1 standard
deviation higher grit were 60% more likely to finish summer training.
 Grit also did not correlate with Whole Candidate Score.
 [However, grit was not the best predictor of 1st-year GPA – the Whole Candidate Score was, at r
= .64 compared to r = .06 for grit. And when Whole Candidate Score and grit were put in the
same model, grit was no longer predictive (r=-.01)]
 Army Special Operations Forces: 42% of candidates withdrew during the Selection Course. Grit
predicted retention (OR = 1.32).
 [However, physical fitness (OR = 1.72) and intelligence (OR = 1.46) predicted retention even
better.]
 Sales: Grit predicted salespeople retention better than other personality traits – extroversion,
emotional stability, conscientiousness. Someone with 1 standard deviation higher grit showed 40%
greater retention at the end of 6 months.
 College GPA: Among U Penn undergrad psych majors, Grit was associated with higher GPAs (r = .25),
and had a stronger effect when controlling for SAT scores (r = .34).
 Grit was associated with lower SAT scores (r = -.20). Possibly because the lower IQ students
(assuming SAT and IQ are correlated) had to have higher grit to get into U Penn.
 [Unsurprisingly, SAT score itself also predicted GPA (r = .30)]
 Graduate degrees: adults who completed a graduate degree were grittier than those who’d only
graduated from 4-year colleges
 Adults who completed 2-year colleges showed higher grit than 4-year colleges too. Possibly
because the dropout rate at 2-year colleges is very high, so those who make it through are
especially gritty.
 Spelling bees: grittier kids went further in the Scripps spelling bee, mediated by studying more hours
and competing in more study bees. From the result of OR = 1.41, a finalist with grit score a standard
deviation higher grit was 41% more likely to advance to further rounds.
 [However, verbal IQ was even more predictive, with OR = 2.22 – finalist with 1 standard
deviation higher grit was 122% more likely to advance.]
In all these studies, grit had little relationship to IQ score, suggesting it is an independent character trait. And
typically grit was able to predict success even after accounting for IQ, meaning it contributes to success above
and beyond IQ.
[the below notes are taken from other chapters and put here for organization in this Grit summary]
Grit is important. Historically, high-achieving people have been known to be dogged in their pursuit of
achievement. Darwin wrote that “men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work” and was

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considered as someone not of superhuman intelligence but one who “kept thinking about the same questions
long after others would move on to different problems.”
In a 1926 study of accomplished figures from history, Catharine Cox inferred their IQs from their
accomplishments and categorized the most eminent geniuses and the least eminent geniuses. The “most
eminent geniuses” (Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton) had an average IQ of 146, and the “least eminent geniuses”
(Giuseppe Mazzini, Joachim Murat) had an average IQ of 143. IQ didn’t distinguish these two groups, but
“persistence of motive” did. Cox found that “high but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest
degree of persistence, will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat
less persistence.” [This study is old and questionable for its estimation of IQ, but I’ll take it at face value.]

Chapter 2: Distracted by Talent

If grit is so important, why do we collectively obsess so much over talent?

When surveyed directly, Americans are more likely to point to hard work as the key to success, rather than
talent. But when asked indirectly, we tend to show a “naturalness bias.” Two research studies:
 Professional musicians were given profiles of two pianists. One profile described talent-based
achievement, and the other effort-based achievement. The musicians then listened to recordings for
each pianist (even though the recordings were actually different parts of the same pianist playing the
same piece), then rated the two pianists on a few factors.
 The talent-based pianist received significantly higher ratings for “talent compared to other
professionals,” “likelihood of success in the future,” and “value as an employee” (the mean
rating for the talent pianist was 7.06, the mean for the effort pianist was 6.73). The effort-based
pianist won only on one factor: “ability to overcome obstacles to career” (5.50 for talent, 6.02
for effort).
 Study participants were given one of two profiles of entrepreneurs. One emphasized natural talent,
and the other emphasized dedicated effort. The profile was identical, save for this sentence: “From the
very beginning, Charles was able to demonstrate a keen sense of the market.” vs “From this
experience, Charles was able to gain a keen sense of the market.” Study participants then heard the
same recording of a business pitch.
 The talent-based entrepreneur was given higher scores for achievement potential (7.36 vs 6.82,
talent vs effort) and business pitch (5.48 vs 4.81, talent vs effort).
 In a conjoint analysis, participants were given randomized profiles of entrepreneurs that varied in five
dimensions (e.g. an IQ of 160, 130, or 100; leadership experience of 8, 5, or 2 years; source of
achievement as “natural” or “striver”).

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  Participants rated these in declining order of importance: investor capital raised (30.5%
importance), IQ (20.9%), management skills by percentile (24.6%), leadership experience
(13.7%), source of achievement (10.3%).
 Even though natural vs striver had the lowest importance, it still had a large effect: seasoned
entrepreneur subjects were willing to give up 4.52 years of leadership experience, 8.95% in
management skills, 28.30 points in IQ, and $39,143 in invested capital to invest in a “natural”
entrepreneur.
Thus, even though the differences are small (within 15% of rating), they still show a significant bias that can tip
the scale in a decision. Duckworth also gives the example of comparing Hillary vs Bill Clinton. Bill seems to be a
gifted politician, while Hillary is competent but has to work hard to fit the role. The implication is that she’ll
never be his equal.
So why do we obsess so much over talent?
Nietzsche argues, “our vanity promotes the cult of the genius. For if we think of genius as something magical,
we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking. To call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here
there is no need to compete.”
In other words, if talent is the major contributor to success, we shouldn’t feel worse about ourselves when
seeing high achievers. “No matter how hard I worked, I wouldn’t be able to do what [X] does, so there’s really
no point in trying” we think, and thus we are excused from effort. This is a fatalistic view, as though results
were granted to us by fate, based on what we’re born with.
This is a warped view of reality, however. Focusing on talent can be destructive. Malcolm Gladwell critiques
the talent mindset in employment as contributing to a narcissistic culture where people are pushed to prove
they’re smarter than everyone else. At Enron, this encouraged short-term performance and showing off but
discouraged long-term growth. Similarly, Enron had a practice of firing the bottom 15% of performers
annually, which rewarded deception and discouraged integrity.
Angela Duckworth adds that obsessing over talent implicitly sends the message that other factors like grit
don’t matter as much as they really do. This can bias us against hard-working but less talented people who
could end up achieving even more.
“The human individual lives far within his limits; he possess powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to
use. Men the world over possess amounts of resource, which only very exceptional individuals push to their
extremes of use.” – William James
[Part of the reason we obsess about talent too is that it actually does produce results – in the Chapter 1
summary, I share studies showing that intelligence correlates well with overall success. However, Duckworth is
saying more that we tend to discount grit more than we should.]

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Chapter 3: Effort Counts Twice
Here is Angela Duckworth’s central model on why effort matters so much:
talent x effort = skill
skill x effort = achievement
Talent equates to how quickly your skills improve when you apply effort.
Achievement is the result of using your skill and applying effort.
In other words:
 Someone of lower talent can catch up in skill level by applying effort
 Someone of lower talent can reach the same skill level, but achieve more over time by applying the
skill with more effort
 Someone of higher talent achieves less by putting in less effort
Here’s a simplistic model of what total achievement looks like, for a natural vs striver:

(This shows achievement = talent x effort2. In reality skill likely follows a logistic S-curve that does not respond
linearly to effort at later points.)
The higher talent person expends some amount of effort and stops.
It takes longer for the lower talent, higher grit person to rev up, but once she does, she catches up in
achievement and exceeds the higher talent person.
For example, a potter improves her skill by applying effort and trying to make pots. While she’s improving the
skill, she continues making a lot of pots, thus increasing output or achievement. A higher talent potter may
start off making better pots, but with lower effort, she will create fewer pots over time.
The same concept may apply to academics, athletics, career, even social relationships.

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A 1940 study had a Treadmill Test where college-aged subjects tried to run on a sloped treadmill until they
gave up. Even after controlling for baseline fitness, run time was a predictor of psychological adjustment
through adulthood.
And grit isn’t just about staying on the treadmill – it’s about getting back on the treadmill, day after day. If you
stop jumping on the treadmill, your effort drops to zero, your skills stop improving, and you stop achieving
output.

Grit Summary Quotes:

“Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or
stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized
whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are
done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.” – Dan Chambliss, sociologist.
“Of course, your opportunities— for example, having a great coach or teacher— matter tremendously, too,
and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does
it include luck. It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that matters, it’s
incomplete.” – Angela Duckworth
“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not
be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be
sexier than me. You might be all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the
treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.” –
Will Smith

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Chapter 4: How Gritty Are You?

This is the Grit Scale questionnaire. For each statement below, note whether it sounds very much like you, or
not at all like you.
Not at all like Not much like Somewhat like Mostly like me Very much like
me me me me

1. New ideas and projects 5 4 3 2 1

sometimes distract me
from previous ones.

2. Setbacks don’t 1 2 3 4 5
discourage me. I don’t give
up easily.

3. I often set a goal but 5 4 3 2 1

later choose to pursue a
different one.

4. I am a hard worker. 1 2 3 4 5

5. I have difficulty 5 4 3 2 1
maintaining my focus on
projects that take more
than a few months to
complete.

6. I finish whatever I begin. 1 2 3 4 5

7. My interests change 5 4 3 2 1
from year to year.

8. I am diligent. I never give 1 2 3 4 5

up.

9. I have been obsessed 5 4 3 2 1

with a certain idea or
project for a short time but
later lost interest.

10. I have overcome 1 2 3 4 5

setbacks to conquer an
important challenge.

(In her real questionnaire, Duckworth has two more questions: “I have achieved a goal that took years of
work” and “I become interested in new pursuits every few months.” But she omitted these because she didn’t
want her audience to need to divide by 12.)

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Add up your score and divide by 10. Here is the population distribution by grit:

Percentile Grit Score

10% 2.5
20% 3.0
30% 3.3
40% 3.5
50% 3.8
60% 3.9
70% 4.1
80% 4.3
90% 4.5
95% 4.7
99% 4.9

Grit has two components: passion and perseverance. For your passion score, add up the odd-numbered items
above. For your perseverance score, add up the even-numbered items.
Chances are, your perseverance score is higher than your passion score. People tend to be better at working
hard than at maintaining a consistent focus. Duckworth claims this suggests passion and perseverance are
different things.
“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” Rather than letting your interest be an intense burst of
firecrackers, let it be a compass instead, guiding you on a long winding route to your ultimate goal.

The Goal Hierarchy

Visualize your goal setting as a hierarchy, with multiple levels:

The low-level goals are your day to day actions – writing emails, going to meetings, jogging for an hour,
reading this Grit summary. We do these goals as means to an end of a higher-level goal – such as executing a
project or looking good to your boss.

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If you continue asking yourself why you do things, these form progressively higher level goals, until you
ultimately have no answer – you simply want to do something just because. This is your highest-level goal that
is an end in itself. You can also consider it your “ultimate concern” or your compass.
This ultimate goal is what should drive every action at lower levels. If an activity doesn’t fit strongly within
your goal hierarchy, then it likely isn’t moving you closer to your goal – and maybe you should stop. (For
example, you might find that answering emails and hanging out on Slack all day isn’t actually helping you make
real progress on your project, which then isn’t driving you toward a promotion.)
Furthermore, the low-level goals are not to be held sacred. If you fail on a low-level goal, another can take its
place. If you find a new low-level goal that is more effective or feasible or fun, you can swap it out for
another. (If you find reading management books or this Grit summary to be more effective than chatting on
Slack, then you can swap the two as a low-level goal).

When well-constructed, a goal hierarchy promotes grit – if all your activities are in pursuit of your highest-
level goal, then your everyday activities apply effort toward your goal.
[Other ways I think a good goal hierarchy improves grit: you focus more of your time on activities consistent
with your ultimate concern, meaning more effort that improves skill and achievement. Also, low-level goals
may be mutually reinforcing, which makes it harder to fall off the wagon (for example, waking up early and
going to the gym may reinforce each other, because if you wake up late you won’t have time to go to the
gym).
I think this also suggests that deliberate design of a goal hierarchy can reduce the willpower needed to
persevere – if you make it a habit, then you execute it without internal friction.]
Here are common failings of goal hierarchies that lead to lower grit:
No lower-level goals

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This person has a dream goal, like playing in the NBA or becoming a billionaire. But she hasn’t mapped out the
lower level goals that will get her there. This is “positive fantasizing” and makes it very difficult to achieve the
goal.
Mid-level goals without a top-level goal

This person has frictions between multiple goals, without a unifying theme. This makes it difficult to tell when
goals are in direct conflict with each other, so some goals actually negate others. The absence of an ultimate
goal may also make your energy feel purposeless. It may feel like spinning your wheels – applying a lot of
effort without going in any particular direction.
[This also suggests why I have no interest in pursuing hobbies – the high level goal for hobbies just isn’t there.]
If you feel pulled in too many directions, how do you prune your goal list? Warren Buffett suggests this
exercise for prioritization:
 Write a list of 25 career goals.
 Circle the 5 highest priority goals for you. Only 5.
 You must avoid the 20 goals you didn’t circle. These are your distractions.
If you can’t decide on 5, then consider quantifying your goals on two scales: interest and importance. Also,
consider whether some of them contribute more to your ultimate concern than others.

Grit Summary Quotes:

“High but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence, will achieve greater
eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence.” – Catharine Cox in 1926,
studying historical geniuses.

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Chapter 5: Grit Grows

All behavioral traits have contribution from genetics and from the environment. When a trait changes rapidly
in a population over time, this suggests environment is the major cause. For instance, the average male height
increased from 5 feet 5 inches in 1850 to 5 feet 10 inches today. Similarly, the Flynn effect finds that the
average IQ today, calibrated to 1900 standards, would be somewhere around 130. As very few human
reproductive generations have passed since these times, there hasn’t been much change in our genetics.
Instead, the environment (better nutrition for height, and more abstract reasoning work for IQ) is the major
contributor.
Duckworth tries to apply this logic to show that grit has some portion due to environment and is malleable.
[Because if grit were purely genetic, the book would be self-defeating – you either have grit or you don’t! Time
to go home.]
In unpublished twin studies, the heritability of perseverance is estimated to be 37%, and passion 20%.
Supposedly, the rest of the contribution is from the environment.
Also, in a survey of US adults, grit rises steadily over age:

Here are possible explanations for this:

 Maturation could be genetically programmed – evolutionarily, grit may not be as beneficial in early
years when seeking mates, and may be more helpful later when caring for a family.
 Older people could have endured more hardship throughout their lives (e.g. by surviving through
World War 2 and the Cold War) and thus trained grit.

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  Maturation happens naturally over time as people learn that grit is a successful strategy for
accomplishing goals, and that the opposite – quitting plans, shifting goals, starting over – leads to
failure and is unsatisfying. Furthermore, life experiences – like getting a job, having children, caring for
parents – require us to mature and adopt more grit.
Because we don’t have longitudinal studies of grit, where we track the same population over decades, we
can’t distinguish between these explanations, but the third is Duckworth’s favorite. Anecdotally, people
change when new expectations are thrust upon them – imagine the teen who sleeps in daily, but then enlists
in the military and is punished for waking up past 6AM. Grit can be grown.

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Part 2: Growing Grit from the Inside Out
So far, we’ve covered why grit leads to success, and why talent is overrated. Part 2 of this Grit summary dives
into the components of grit – what it consists of, and how to make them stronger.
If you’re not as gritty as you want to be, ask yourself why. Common reasons:
 I’m bored.
 The effort isn’t worth it.
 This isn’t important to me.
 I can’t do this, so I might as well give up.
The very gritty tend to give up for the above reasons less. Angela Duckworth argues that there are four
psychological assets that paragons of grit have in common:
 Interest: enjoy what you’re doing
 Practice: conduct deliberate practice to improve on your weaknesses and continuously improve
 Purpose: believe that your work matters and improves the lives of others
 Hope: believe in your capacity for achievement and ability to overcome difficulties
Part 2 of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance dives into each of these aspects.

Chapter 6: Interest

Being interested by your pursuit is the beginning of developing grit. Paragons of grit say, “I love what I do. I
can’t wait to get on with the next project.” They’re doing things not because they’re forced to.
Duckworth argues that grit cannot truly exist without interest, and thus that people who are not intrinsically
interested in an activity will not work as hard or achieve as much as people who are.
Research suggests that people are more satisfied and more effective at their jobs when they do something
that fits their personal interests. For instance, if you prefer interacting with people, you’ll perform better as a
salesperson than as a data entry clerk. Unfortunately, only 13% of adults consider themselves engaged at
work.
This reflects the likelihood that most people are not working in the place of their greatest interest. Of course,
not every interest can lead to a sustainable career for most people (like playing videogames or reading books),
but people can try to match their career and their interests better.
Part of the problem is an unrealistic expectation around how interests are discovered. People expect to find
something that just clicks and fall head-over-heels in love with “their passion,” just as in romance.

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Instead, Duckworth argues that passion needs to be developed. It starts with discovery, followed by
development, then a lifetime of deepening.
You shouldn’t expect to discover your interest early in life or right out of college – many people find their
life’s work after trying lots of different things. Furthermore, “interests are triggered by interactions with the
outside world” – not arrived at solely by introspection. You can’t simply will yourself to like things. It’s also
ironically harder to feel when you’re interested, since when you’re excited you’re distracted, whereas
boredom causes painful recognition of your boredom.
Next, interest deepens after engaging with an activity over time. Through repeated exposures to your
interest, you discover fascinating subtleties and facets that you would never find if you didn’t stick with it.
[This may be related to the Dunning-Kruger effect – when you know nothing, you think you know everything,
which makes the task seem boring.] Eventually, the desire for mastery and continuous improvement becomes
the driving force. “For the expert, novelty is nuance.”
[This also overlaps with the Tiger Mom philosophy of needing to work at something, and be minimally good at
something, to understand whether you enjoy it or not.]
Interests thrive when supporters, like parents and coaches, provide positive feedback and ongoing stimulation
to nurture the interest.
For parents, Angela Duckworth argues that childhood is too early to detect interests. People only start to
gravitate to general interests in middle school age. Also, forcing a passion doesn’t work. Allow open play to
discover and retrigger interests, before enforcing discipline. This will develop intrinsic motivation. [Consider
this like starting a fire with an ember – blow it gently to get hotter and light the kindling, don’t smother it.]
How do you discover an interest if you haven’t found one?
 Ask yourself questions: What do you like to think about? Where does your mind wander? What
matters most to you? How do you enjoy spending your time? What did you dislike most about your last
job or project?
 Armed with a general direction, go out and try things. Trigger your interests with related activities.
Don’t be afraid to guess.
 Don’t be afraid to change direction based on more data.
 Once you find an interest, keep digging. Keep asking questions about the craft. Seek out other people
with the same interest. Find a supportive mentor. Combat novelty by appreciating the nuance.
[Duckworth argues that high-achieving gritty people stick with an interest and have fewer career changes.
There are a few explanations here:
 Grit is a personal innate characteristic. They happen to find an interest they like and stick to it. But if
they were to switch to another interest, they’d do just as well.
 Grit is developed by finding an interest. As you work deeper on the interest, you develop grit, and as
you develop grit, your interest deepens. This then spills over into the rest of life, so you generally
become grittier.

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  Survivorship bias – the people who stick with an interest are the ones who are naturally more
successful at it, and thus have less reason to change. Other people who tried it and worked hard have
long since failed and given up, making it more about talent than grit. The reality may be a mix of both.]

Chapter 7: Practice

Deliberate practice is the best way to improve. It consists of:

 Setting a stretch goal. Focus on a narrow aspect that you want to improve. Set a reach goal that you
can’t meet yet.
 Apply full concentration and effort. Many greats do this in isolation, by themselves.
 Receive immediate and informative feedback. Focus on what you can improve.
 Repeat with reflection and refinement. Keep working until you meet that stretch goal. And when you
meet it, choose a new stretch goal.
Much of this concept comes from Anders Ericsson, who popularized the well-known idea that to become an
expert, you need to invest roughly 10 years of hard work or 10,000 hours. Other evidence cited to support
deliberate practice:
 Amount of time musicians spent practicing alone is a better predictor of how quickly they develop than
time practicing with other musicians.
 In spelling bees, deliberate practice was a better predictor of final round performance (OR = 2.64) than
being quizzes (OR = 1.61) and leisure reading time (OR = 0.99). Deliberate practice was also highly
correlated with grit. [Caution: they defined deliberate practice for study subjects as studying and
memorizing words alone, not as the 4-component definition above.]
This requires deliberate effort to do every time you practice.
Deliberate practice is more effortful and less enjoyable than other forms of practice. Even world-class
performers handle a maximum of one hour of deliberate practice before needing a break, and can only do 3-5
hours of deliberate practice per day. Dancer Martha Graham described the path to achievement as “daily
small deaths.”
Even very motivated people don’t necessarily practice deliberately. [This could be part of the reason people
complain that a person can work very hard but not succeed – they’re not setting ambitious goals that they fail
on, and they’re spinning their wheels in the same place. It seems grit, as defined by the scale, does not
necessitate deliberate practice, though it correlates with success.]
However, grittier people tend to find deliberate practice more enjoyable than less gritty people, and they also
do more of it. It’s unclear what direction the causality is – grittier people could spend more time in practice
and develop a taste for it, or that grittier kids innately enjoy hard work and that pushes them to do more of it.

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To increase deliberate practice, make it a habit. Figure out when and where you’re best at doing deliberate
practice. Then commit to doing it then and there every day. This makes you get into deliberate practice
automatically without thinking about it. “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing
is habitual, for whom the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation.” –
William James. [See my summary on The Power of Habit for more strategies on developing a habit.]
Furthermore, change how you feel about deliberate practice. Embrace the challenge and feel great at your
improvement. Toddlers repeatedly try to learn to walk without getting anxious or embarrassed. Then they
start getting cues that failure is bad from adults. Embrace it as “that was hard! It was great!”
For instance, reading this Grit summary is just the first step. Now you actually need to plan out how this book
is going to change your life habits. Set a stretch goal for yourself, apply full concentration, and get feedback on
how you did..
Deliberate Practice vs Flow
How does this painful deliberate practice idea fit in with the idea of flow, described as “performing at high
levels of challenge and yet feeling effortless,” a pleasurable state often reached by top performers? Athletes
and performers describe it as an automatic performance at a very high quality, done without thinking.
Deliberate practice is effortful and painful, flow is effortless and enjoyable.
There may be no conflict. Deliberate practice is a behavior or a habit, and flow is an experience. Gritty people
do more deliberate practice and experience more flow than non-gritty people. The two aren’t experienced at
the same time.
In other words, deliberate practice improves your skill, and the challenge level exceeds your current skill. This
practice allows you to achieve flow, when the level of challenge meets your level of skill, and you’re not
analyzing your mistakes, you’re just doing. Analogously, a figure skater toils through deliberate practice to
perfect her jumps and spins. Then, on performance day, she allows her skill to engage automatically – she’s
already trained for that moment. [This is similar to what Floyd Mayweather and Shaun White say about their
performance days.]

Chapter 8: Purpose

Purpose, as defined here, is “the intention to contribute to the well-being of others.”

Duckworth found that universally, grit paragons extend the benefits of their achievement to a level beyond
themselves – other people (like their children or clients) or an abstract concept (society, this country, science).
Evolutionarily, we may have developed a drive for altruism, because a cooperative species thrives more than
the individual. This improves grit by both sustaining passion (because your goals are more important) and
perseverance (because you fight harder for goals that you care more about).

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There are at least two large ways of achieving happiness, and that can be divided roughly into pleasure (self-
centered enjoyment) and purpose (outward-benefiting). Pleasure tends to be stable across grit levels,
but grittier people tend to feel a greater sense of purpose.
There is a possible confound here where grittier people may take on jobs that are generally accepted to have
more purpose (like being a doctor), making the purpose questions easier to answer. However, across a range
of careers, Amy Wrzesniewski has found similar proportions of people who consider their occupations a job, a
career, or a calling. “Even” secretaries or garbage collectors can find their work purposeful.
It may seem that self-oriented and other-oriented motivations are on opposite sides of the spectrum, but
research has found that they’re independent. You can have neither, and you can have both. You can at once
want to be the most successful person, while at the same time helping others. People who have both self-
oriented and other-oriented motives tend to be the most productive.
The parable of the bricklayers: Three bricklayers are asked, “what are you doing?” The first says, “I am laying
bricks.” The second says, “I am building a church.” The third says, “I am building the house of God.”
The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling.
Defined further, people who have jobs are interested only in the material benefits from work, and don’t
receive other rewards from it. The work is not an end in itself. People who have careers have deeper personal
investment and enjoy advancement within the organizational structure. People who have callings find their
work inseparable from their life – the work is personally fulfilling.
[This recalls a story from someone who visited the SpaceX factory floor and asked someone what he was
working on. The SpaceX worker replied, “the mission of SpaceX is to make humans a multiplanetary species.
To accomplish this, we need to lower the cost of rockets by making them reusable. I work on the guidance
system that helps the rocket be reusable.” The point is that the employees see their work as closely aligned to
the company’s mission, which has a broad humanity-wide purpose.
This also suggests that companies that donate to charity or have altruistic projects can motivate the workforce
who don’t directly work on those projects. For instance, working on Google’s ad technology might be
demoralizing if you believe it exists only to extract more value from advertisers; if you connect it to Google’s
moonshot projects in self-driving cars and curing aging, then your satisfaction may increase.]
People who feel purpose in their work show meaningful benefits:
 They feel more satisfied with their jobs and lives overall.
 They miss fewer days of work.
 They’re more willing to work unpaid after hours.
 They work more overtime per week.
 They improve performance metrics, like number of calls made or dollars raised, for fundraising callers.
 Anecdotally, having purpose pushes you beyond normal obstacles. Because you’re working for a
greater cause and are backed by all the people you want to help, you’re not afraid to pound on doors

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 and doggedly pursue your goal. Whereas when you’re acting selfishly, you become self-conscious
about barriers.
Purpose takes time to develop – thus it tends to follow interest and practice, from the previous chapters. You
don’t have to feel purpose right away. In fact, some students may be giving up too early if they skip from job
to job every couple of years. Duckworth gives several anecdotes of a subway engineer and a physician who
spent over a decade learning the intricacies of their craft and deepening their interest before broadening their
purpose to a broader impact (they weren’t notable enough to include in this summary of the Grit book).
How do you cultivate a sense of purpose?
 Reflect on how the work you’re doing can positively contribute to society.
 Researchers asked students to connect what they were learning with how the world could be a
better place. The one-time intervention took just one class period. Compared to
control, students increased their GPA (from 1.9 to 2.1), doubled their time studying on practice
questions, and completed more math questions. Results were stronger for students who were
at greater academic risk.
 Think about how you can change your current work to connect to your core values, even if just in small
ways.
 An experimental group of employees was assigned to a job-crafting workshop, where they
came up with their own ideas for changing their routines and building a map for what would
constitute more meaningful work. Six weeks later, coworkers rated the employees as happier
and more effective.
 Find a purposeful role model.
 Identify someone who inspires you to be a better person, and who acts on behalf of other
people. This exemplar proves to you that it’s possible to be successful carrying a mission
greater than yourself. This in turn inspires your own belief that you can personally make a
difference.
[As before, there is unclear causation – do gritty people naturally empathize with people and want to be
altruistic? Or can you develop purpose, which in turn makes you grittier? Is this malleable?]
Grit Summary Quotes
“I was very good at going into new environments and helping people realize they’re capable of more than they
know. I started to realize that if I could help people— individuals— do that, then I could help teams. If I could
help teams, I could help companies. If I could help companies, I could help brands. If I could help brands, I
could help communities and countries.“– Kat Cole, from Hooters waitress to Cinnabon President

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Chapter 9: Hope

Grit depends on a hope that you have the power to improve things. Hope sustains passion by giving optimism
that one day you can achieve your goals, and thus they’re worth holding for long periods of time. Hope
sustains perseverance by encouraging thinking about how to overcome setbacks, rather than just accepting
them as permanent.
Seligman and Maier split dogs into two groups. In one group, the dog is put in a cage and is shocked at random
times. If the dog pushes against a panel at the front of the cage, the shock ends early. After 64 shocks, the pain
ends. In the other group, there is no panel that ceases the shocks.
The next day, the dog is put into a box with a divider leading to another box partition. The shock is now
announced with a warning tone, so the dog has a chance to react. There is not a difference in behavior. Nearly
all the dogs who had control over the shocks learn to jump over the wall and escape the shocks. Only 1/3 of
the dogs who had no control escape – the other 2/3 simply lay down and wait for the shocks to end.
This concept is called learned helplessness. Suffering without the belief of control habitually leads to
depression symptoms, lack of concentration, and mood disorders. It can feel like all is lost, and there is no
solution to your problems.
The antithesis to learned helplessness is learned optimism. Optimists tend to explain their suffering with
temporary and specific causes, while pessimists seek permanent and broad causes.
For example, consider the prompt of “you can’t get all the work done that others expect of you. Imagine one
major cause for this event.” Pessimists are more likely to say a permanent, broad cause like “I screw up
everything. I’m a loser.” This attitude is broad and pervades nearly everything you do in life.
In contrast, optimists are likely to say “I mismanaged my time” or “I didn’t communicate my expectations well
enough.” This leads to specific actionables to address next time. Addressing specific and temporary causes is a
part of cognitive behavioral therapy. If you keep searching for solutions to your problems, you at least have a
chance of solving them. If you stop looking, you have zero chance. “Whether you think you can, or think you
can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
A similar concept is the growth mindset, that intelligence can be trained and is not innate. It considers
responses to these statements:
 Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
 You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
 No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
 You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
A growth mindset increases grit and perseverance – if you hit an obstacle, you don’t attribute it to permanent
personal traits. You instead believe you have the capacity to improve, no matter what you do. In contrast, with

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a fixed mindset, you think that you failed at something because you simply don’t have it in you and you’ll
never have it – so why keep trying?
A surprising finding: adolescents change their IQs from adolescence to adulthood. This may be a special event
in puberty, but suggests that our brains are plastic and can be rewired.
What evidence shows the benefits of optimism and growth mindset?
 Optimists are less likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, tend to earn higher grades, stay
healthier, are twice as likely to stay in their jobs, and sell 25% more than pessimists.
 In a study of Teach for America teachers, optimistic teachers were grittier and happier, and they led
to higher achievements for their students.
 Growth mindset students are grittier, earn higher grades, and are more likely to persist through
college.
 Employees in growth-mindset cultures (where employees were developed, rather than focusing on the
top performers) were 47% more likely to say colleagues are trustworthy, 49% more likely to say their
company fosters innovation, and 65% to say their company supports risk taking.
Both poles of optimism/pessimism and growth/fixed mindset can be self-reinforcing. Negatively, if you
believe your skills have hit their permanent limits, and you believe life’s problems are caused by those limits,
you are less likely to overcome roadblocks – after all, it’s logical to give up if there’s no way out. Your
recurrent failures then perpetuate your negative feelings, which further reduce your likelihood of success and
cause you to avoid challenges that would have led to growth.
In contrast, if you believe your skills can perpetually grow, and that misfortune is temporary and can be fixed,
you keep trying to solve problems. When you break through and improve, you further reinforce your positive
beliefs, which makes you try even harder next time. Importantly, you actively seek challenges beyond your
ability that lead to growth (recall deliberate practice).
Suggestive evidence of long-term effects comes from variations of the original Seligman/Maier shocking
experiments. They performed the same experiment on adolescent rats, and assessed them five weeks later as
adults. The rats without control over shocks grew up timid and less adventurous. In contrast, the rats with
control over their shocks seemed resilient to learned helplessness.
Maier argues that neural rewiring is strengthened by success. “Just telling somebody they can overcome
adversity isn’t enough” –you have to pair the low-level feeling of progress with high-level mindset changes to
strengthen the connection between cause and effect.
The duration of learned helplessness is troubling for kids in poverty, who receive a lot of helplessness
experiences and not enough mastery experiences. For kids at the more impressionable age, the wiring
between failure and mindset can be strengthened considerably. Similarly, kids who coast through life without
having to overcome adversity can have low grit that makes them crumble under pressure. Both situations can
be reinforced by fixed mindset attitudes from parents or teachers – “you’re just no good at this, and you’ll
never amount to anything.”

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How do you increase optimism and growth mindset?
 Update your beliefs about intelligence and talent. Believe that your brain is plastic, and you have the
ability to grow.
 Practice optimistic self-talk. [Angela Duckworth says to see a therapist and doesn’t give many
examples.]
 Say/Don’t Says from KIPP schools:

Fixed Mindset Growth Mindset and Grit

“You’re a natural!” “You’re a learner!”

“Well, at least you tried.” “That didn’t work. Let’s talk about how you
approached it and what might work better.”

“Great job! You’re so talented.” “Great job! What’s one thing that could have
been even better?”

“This is hard. Don’t feel bad if you can’t do it.” “This is hard. Don’t feel bad if you can’t do it
yet.”

“Maybe this just isn’t your strength. Don’t “I have high standards. I’m holding you to them
worry – you have other things to contribute.” because I know we can reach them together.”

 Ask for help. Mentors with growth mindsets can coach you through introspection and set goals to push
you on the virtuous cycle.
 When you default to fixed mindset, recognize it, and put a label to it. Call yourself “Pessimistic Pete” or
“Abdicating Allen”
[Once again, the confound – that people who don’t have major life problems like health conditions become
more optimistic and achieve more. Needs more interventional studies]

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Part 3: Growing Grit from the Outside In
Now that our Grit book summary has covered the major internal components of grit, we move on to external
components: parenting, coaches, and culture. Part 3 of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance teaches
you how to create situations and environments that improve grit.

Chapter 10: Parenting for Grit

Parenting styles are split on two axes: Demanding <-> Undemanding, and Supportive <-> Unsupportive.

(Wise parenting is also known as authoritative parenting.)

Thus, it’s a myth that demanding high standards and loving support are on the same spectrum, and necessarily
trade off with each other. This myth causes parents who fear being oppressive to swing too hard in the other
direction, giving unconditional support and open latitude.
Wise parenting presupposes that children are not always the better judge of what to do, how hard to work,
and when to give up.
Wise parenting produces kids who get higher grades, are more self-reliant, and experience less anxiety and
depression. This is generally true across ethnicity, social class, and marital status. For instance, white children
of middle class, non-intact families showed a GPA difference of 3.14 vs 2.73 for authoritative vs
nonauthoritative parenting. Black children of working class, non-intact families showed GPA differences of
2.78 vs 2.42.
Here is the key table from the paper:

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By Allen Cheng | Visit www.allencheng.com for more book summaries like this one 26
As children age, wise parenting leads to healthier behavior. Children of neglectful parents performed worst,
drinking alcohol and smoking at a rate twice as much as their wise-parented peers. They also showed
multiples more rates of antisocial behavior and internalizing symptoms (depression). Indulgent parenting
produced children slightly better than neglectful parenting, but noticeably worse than the other two styles.
Finally, compared to wise parenting, authoritarian parenting produced children with similar alcohol and
smoking use, but slightly more antisocial behavior and noticeably more internalizing symptoms.

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By Allen Cheng | Visit www.allencheng.com for more book summaries like this one 28
How do you distinguish parenting styles? Here are statements posed to children.
Supportive: Warm
 I can count on my parents to help me out if I have a problem.
 My parents spend time just talking to me.
 My parents and I do things that are fun together.
 My parents don’t really like me to tell them my troubles.
 My parents hardly ever praise me for doing well.

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Supportive: Respectful
 My parents believe I have a right to my own point of view.
 My parents tell me that their ideas are correct and that I shouldn’t question them.
 My parents respect my privacy.
 My parents give me a lot of freedom.
 My parents make most of the decisions about what I can do.
Demanding
 My parents really expect me to follow family rules.
 My parents really let me get away with things.
 My parents point out ways I could do better.
 When I do something wrong, my parents don’t punish me.
 My parents expect me to do my best even when it’s hard.
Similar statements apply to teachers:
Demanding (produces better academic results)
 My teacher accepts nothing less than our best effort.
 Students in this class behave the way my teacher wants them to.
Supportive (improves student happiness)
 My teacher seems to know if something is bothering me.
 My teacher wants us to share our thoughts.
In an interesting experiment, graded student essays were sorted into two piles. The experimental group had a
note that read: “I’m giving you these comments because I have every high expectations and I know that you
can reach them.” The control read, “I’m giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your
paper.” Students were then given the option of revising their essays. 80% of the students with the wise
feedback turned in a revised paper, compare to 40% control!
Duckworth posits that supportive and demanding parenting may be more likely to lead to grit, but requires
that parents model grit for their children. Not all children under wise parenting will grow up gritty, and not all
gritty parents will practice wise parenting.
Therefore, in her family, Duckworth applies the Hard Thing Rule:
1. Everyone in the family has to do a hard thing. A hard thing requires daily deliberate practice (such as
getting better at your job, yoga, violin).

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 2. You can’t quit until a natural stopping point. Examples: tuition payment is up, season is over. You can’t
quit on a bad day.
3. You get to pick your own hard thing. This develops interest.
4. (In high school) Each child must commit to an activity for at least two years.
Grit Summary Quotes
“You can quit. . . . But you can’t come home because I’m not going to live with a quitter. You’ve known that
since you were a kid. You’re not coming back here.” – Steve Young’s father, when Steve wanted to quit college
football.

Chapter 11: The Playing Fields of Grit

Outside of the home, extracurriculars have been found to correlate well with student outcomes like better
grades, higher self-esteem, and lower delinquency. In particular, the longer you engage in an extracurricular,
and the more hours per week you spend, the better the outcomes.
The cited studies:
 Spending more than a year in extracurriculars increases graduation rate and adult volunteering.
Spending more than 2 years in extracurriculars predicts having a job and earning more money
[modestly; regression coefficient between intensity and log income was 0.04].
 Personal Qualities Project: After controlling for grades and SAT scores, follow-through was the best
predictor of career accomplishments, graduating from college with honors, holding leadership
positions. [but grades and SAT scores were still the best predictors]
 Extracurricular follow-through correlates with higher grit scores and lowers dropout rates.
 In teachers, extracurricular follow-through correlates with longer retention and more effective
academic gains. Retained teachers had grit grid ratings of 3.98 vs 2.79 in unretained teachers. Effective
teachers had grit ratings of 3.88 vs 3.20 in less effective teachers. In contrast, GPA, SAT scores, and
interviewer ratings did not correlate with retention or effectiveness.
 Learned industriousness: A training period that is more difficult increases endurance on a next set of
exercises. Also, increasing the ratio of tasks completed to positive feedback (e.g. giving approval after
student has gotten 5 questions right, vs approval after 1 question right) increases the number of tasks
completed – in one experiment by over 100%.
 [This matches deliberate practice – the second phase of hard solo work comes before the third
phase of feedback. If you spoil someone too much with positive feedback at regular intervals,
they have to work less hard to get it.]
Why are extracurriculars so helpful?

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  There’s an adult who can practice supportive and demanding guidance. This allows a complementary
role model to parents (whom kids probably get sick of listening to).
 Extracurriculars are designed to cultivate grit – interest, practice, purpose, hope.
 Kids feel challenged and have fun in extracurriculars. Other activities are lacking – in class, they feel
challenged but unmotivated, and hanging out with friends is fun but not challenging.
But where is the causation? Do extracurriculars train grit, or do more gritty people happen to just participate
in more extracurriculars?
Duckworth argues it’s both – follow-through requires a baseline of grit, then builds it at the same time. This
is the “corresponsive principle” – the traits that steer us toward certain life situations are the same traits that
those situations reinforce.
This can lead to both virtuous and vicious cycles. Someone who is encouraged to try and try again, against
her comfort, may experience the satisfaction of a breakthrough. This may then encourage the child to try even
more difficult things, then to welcome challenge.
[Despite my insistence on proving causation, I can anecdotally attest to the power of mindset shifts. From an
ego centered around being correct to an ego around finding the truth; from pursuing safe prestige to
embracing failed experiments. I have a high baseline of willpower that gets me to start things, but the mindset
shift ups the intensity and develops a habit. The bizarro Allen who had the same baseline of willpower but
didn’t adopt the same mindsets might be a slovenly degenerate.
Likely the earlier you intervene, the more plastic the child is, and the easier time you can build virtuous cycles
before vicious cycles take root. Unfortunately there is a correlation between family income and Grit Grid
scores – 1 full point for students who qualify for free meals.]
Dean of Harvard College admissions Bill Fitzsimmons says these students stand out: students who “have made
a commitment to pursue something they love, believe in, and value – and have done so with singular energy,
discipline, and plain old hard work.” He argues that “all that grit that was developed can almost always be
tarnsferred to something else.”

Chapter 12: A Culture of Grit

A culture exists when a group of people agree on how to do things and why. The sharper the difference
between this group and the rest of the world, the stronger the bonds.
To be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it. You will conform to the group and adopt their gritty
habits. When it’s socially expected to wake up at 4AM to practice, it becomes what you do.
The causation is bidirectional between the people and the culture. People need to be gritty to join a culture
that selects for grit (like a top sports team). Then, because gritty people will reinforce each other, the culture
gets grittier, which raises the bar for people who join. This is the corresponsive principle at work.

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Eventually, the values of the culture we belong to become part of our identity. When values like grit become
part of our identity, decisions depending on those values become habit and automatic. If it’s part of your
identity to finish what you complete, you don’t constantly stop and ask, “what is the cost-benefit tradeoff of
continuing? What are the risks?” You ask: “Who am I? What is this situation? What does someone like me do
in a situation like this?” Often grit will take you past the point when it’s seemingly rational to give up – if grit is
part of your identity, persevering and keeping passion is just something you do.
Thus, think of yourself as someone who can overcome adversity, as someone who can get the better of bad
fortune by proving you can stand worse. You will tend to act in a way that is consistent with your self-belief.
As a leader, create a gritty culture:
 Repeat the value of grit repeatedly in your communication. Make it a tagline you can refer to easily,
and that people will repeat to each other and themselves.
 Jamie Dimon wrote: “Have a fierce resolve in everything you do.” “Demonstrate determination,
resiliency, and tenacity.” “Do not let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.” “Use
mistakes and problems as opportunities to get better – not reasons to quit.”
 Pete Carroll says: “Always compete.” “You’re either competing or you’re not.” “Compete in
everything you do.” “You’re a Seahawk 24-7.” “Finish strong.” “Positive self-talk.” “Team first.”
“Be early.” (They interpret compete to mean “strive together,” not “make someone else lose.”)
 Give the Grit Scale questionnaire and let them see their results.
 Give a test of grit (like the treadmill test) and make the results publicly known.
 Test your teammates on memorizing your cultural values and articulating what it means.
 Lead by example. Built an improvement plan for someone who is struggling, and execute it alongside
them. They will soon bootstrap themselves to improve independently.
 Recruit people who are demonstrably grittier than the average in your team.
 Praise behavior that is gritty.
 Be a supportive and demanding mentor. Think about how you would treat your own children.

Grit Summary Quotes

“Do not let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.” – Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer
of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who
knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows
in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,

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so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Teddy
Roosevelt
“if you create a vision for yourself and stick with it, you can make amazing things happen in your life. My
experience is that once you have done the work to create the clear vision, it is the discipline and effort to
maintain that vision that can make it all come true. The two go hand in hand. The moment you’ve created that
vision, you’re on your way, but it’s the diligence with which you stick to that vision that allows you to get
there. Getting that across to players is a constant occupation.” – Pete Carroll, Seattle Seahawks coach

Chapter 13: Conclusion

Angela Duckworth ends Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance with a series of rebuttals to common
counterarguments.
Does grit conflict with happiness? No – actually, life satisfaction and grit correlate strongly. Angela Duckworth
hasn’t yet studied the happiness of people around gritty people – partners, children, parents. However, she
believes her kids appreciate her grittiness and know achieving their goals is better than complacency.
Can you have too much grit, just like you can have too courageous or too honest? Angela Duckworth admits
that persevering blindly and without exception isn’t the best default – this can cause you to miss
opportunities. Ideally, you swap the activity with something else that is consistent with your ultimate concern.
She also argues that by far, most of us need more grit, not less.
Is grit the only thing that matters? No. In appraising, morality is the most important character trait. Angela
Duckworth defines three clusters of character
 intrapersonal (grit, self-control) – the resume virtues
 interpersonal (gratitude, social intelligence) – the eulogy virtues
 intellectual (curiosity, zest)
Each of these clusters predicts different outcomes.
Does encouraging grit set expectations unrealistically high for children? Will they grow up thinking they can be
Mozart or Einstein? If they realize they can’t get there, will they give up? The point of growth is not to become
Einstein – it’s to be the best you can, and to break past your self-imposed limits. To be gritty is to put one foot
in front of the other, day after week after year, to fall down and rise again.

Open Questions
I hope you’ve learned from this Grit summary. Here are some open questions that the book doesn’t directly
answer that you might enjoy musing on.

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How do you escape out of a local maxima of interest? What if the pursuit of grit makes you miss the forest for
the trees by continuing something you shouldn’t be? Are there suggestions for when to re-initialize and
explore more, rather than being confined to a fate?
Talent is still a multiplier on effort, and between two people working hard, the more talented person will
achieve more. How do you identify and measure talent? Perhaps as defined as rate of skill growth with effort?
Can you learn grit by training a skill that is not an interest, and then transfer that grit to a later developed
interest? More Tiger Mom style – if you train really hard at piano even though you dislike it, do you build a grit
muscle that you can then transfer to something you really love, like dance? Or is it always more effective to
spend time finding an interest, then developing that?
To develop purpose, can you motivate people who aren’t altruistic or empathetic to care about other people?
This seems difficult, knowing the selfish people I know.

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